Year: 2020

By Kristy Pickurel

The Impact of COVID-19 on Packaging, Safety and Food Waste:
Clemson Creative Inquiry sponsored by Sonoco FRESH

Mint Innovations Team
Dakota Cook, Maria Camargo, Brennan Morgan, Ana Romero*
*Team Mentor

The Clemson COVID Challenge was a summer 2020 virtual research and design opportunity for teams of undergraduates to work on problems related to the current COVID-19 situation as well as future possible pandemics. Teams of students worked with mentors to identify problems and come up with proposed ideas and solutions. In mid-June, students submitted a pitch video of their ideas and competed for the opportunity to see their projects possibly continue to implementation. Sonoco FRESH sponsored a Creative Inquiry (CI) team to look at the impact of COVID-19 on packaging, safety and food waste. Below is a summary of the team’s project and a link to the team’s poster presentation.

When COVID-19 started to spread quickly across the country in early March 2020, restaurants, bars and many other places started closing. The resulting shift in food demand, combined with a change in consumer behavior, caused a strain in the supply chain.

The CI team members performed literature reviews, interviews with corporate experts in packaging and agriculture, brainstormed potential solutions and created a 3-minute video pitch describing their proposed solution of vacuum packaging.

Vacuum packaging is a type of packaging that extends shelf life by removing oxygen and preserves quality of food and increases shelf life by eliminating growth of spoilage bacteria (aerobic bacteria). Extending shelf life reduces food waste, and the tamper evident packaging will add an additional layer of comfort and safety in consumers’ minds.

View the Team’s Poster Presentation

The mission of the Sonoco FRESH initiative is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. This means looking holistically at the food life cycle and identifying opportunities that reimagine processes, technologies and behaviors. More information on the Sonoco FRESH initiative can be found at www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH.

By Kristy Pickurel

Clemson University’s Recycling Services department manages a compost site which processes food waste from campus. The site is located at the Cherry Crossing Research Facility. Just like the rest of us it has been greatly impacted by COVID-19, but work at the site has not stopped. Student interns Matthew Lawrence and Jared Montgomery were kind enough to give FRESH a tour of the facility earlier this spring.

Food scraps, paper towel waste and yard waste are generated and collected on campus in green composting bins. Clemson’s recycling staff picks the bins up and takes them to the Cherry Crossing facility, where the organic waste is dumped onto a bed of wood chips. The chips and waste are mixed thoroughly to create a pile.

This mixture then undergoes a 6-week process of progressing piles, ending with the cure pile, which is loaded into a trommel and sifted into the final product of sifted compost. The sifted compost can be land applied or used as soil amendment. The compost piles are turned every other day to make sure they are aerated properly and decomposing as quickly as they can.

Clemson’s composting program began with a $25,000 grant from the South Carolina DHEC Office of Waste & Recycling, which allowed the university to purchase an in-vessel composter that is still in use today. An alternative to the manual process just described, the composter processes waste much more quickly. Waste and wood chips are combined in the unit’s mixer and then sent to the tumbler. The tumbler rotates once every hour and helps to accelerate the process.

Cherry Crossing’s final compost product is used by campus landscaping as well as the student organic farm. This past year a large majority went to Musser Fruit Farm, Clemson’s fruit research farm. The compost is also typically sold to the community, but sales were suspended at the time of our tour. With Clemson’s campus shutting down as a result of the pandemic, there had been an extreme shortage of food waste produced from campus. Before the campus closed due to COVID-19, the recycling staff was picking up about 48 bins per day. Now they’re only collected an average of 10 bins a week.

Aside from the effects of the pandemic, the composting program’s biggest challenge is contamination, i.e. items that can’t be composted being placed in the composting bins. These include film plastics such as plastic bags and saran wrap, as well as metal forks and plastic cups from the dining halls. According to Lawrence, Clemson’s composting program was constantly expanding until the virus hit. Since he began interning with the program in November of 2019, composting bins have been placed in two new POD (provisions on demand) markets on campus. The team has also started a community garden at the Cherry Crossing facility and hopes to begin distributing the fruits of its plants in the near future.

For more information on Clemson’s composting and recycling programs, please visit the Clemson Website.

The mission of the Sonoco FRESH initiative is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. This means looking holistically at the food life cycle and identifying opportunities that reimagine processes, technologies and behaviors. More information on the Sonoco FRESH initiative can be found at www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH.

Visit the FRESH YouTube Channel to view a video of the tour.

By Kristy Pickurel

During the spring of 2020, Clemson students Shemar Bryant, Maddyson Frierson, Caroline Joseph and Emily White, led by the university’s Recycling Manager Dave VanDeventer, participated in a Creative Inquiry (CI) sponsored by Sonoco FRESH to document the current life cycle of food waste on campus. The goal of their effort, the Clemson Food Waste Recovery Initiative, was to develop a guide that prioritizes actions to prevent or divert food waste from landfills.

The team researched colleges and universities across the United States that are considered leaders in the areas of the EPA Hierarchy of Food Recovery – institutions that implement actions at the top levels of the hierarchy, which are considered the best ways to prevent and divert wasted food because they create the most benefits for the environment, society and the economy. The project highlighted the programs that the team believed stood out and could benefit, and potentially be implemented at, Clemson.

Clemson has seen many successes when it comes to reducing food waste, but there is always room for improvement. Trayless dining has been implemented on campus, but according to rising junior Caroline Joseph, “people see the dining hall as an all you can eat buffet and they don’t think twice about throwing away the food they don’t like or loading up their plates with more than they know they are going to eat.” The CI team identified Clemson’s composting program as one of the university’s strong suits when it comes to food waste reduction and would love to see the program expand to non-dining hall locations on campus, such as Chick-fil-A and Subway.  Most of Clemson’s athletic programs have steadily approached zero waste. In fact, Clemson secured first place in the Game Day Recycling Challenge in 2014, 2017 and 2018. The challenge is an annual event where colleges and universities across the nation complete to see who can recycle or reduce the most waste during football games. 123,661 pounds of trash were recycled during Clemson’s 2018 home football games.

One area the CI students discussed at length was food donation. Currently, Clemson donates perishable and non-perishable goods to the Golden Corner Food Pantry in Seneca, SC. Thus far, 22,000 lbs. of items have been donated for the 2019-2020 school year. The university also supports the Paw Pantry, a student-run, on-campus space offering supplies of food and hygiene products. While the school holds food drives and encourages students to use their Paw Points/Tiger Stripe balances to benefit the pantry, the pantry cannot offer perishable goods like produce, milk or meat. According to CI student Caroline Joseph, “There are a lot of food safety issues, storage problems and a lack of transportation that feed into the inability to donate all of our leftover food. There are so many other schools around the same size as Clemson that have excellent donation programs to food pantries on campus and in the surrounding areas, so we know it’s possible.” The CI team would like to see Clemson create a Food Recovery Network, similar to what Northern Arizona University (NAU) has done. A professional nonprofit with 230 chapters across the United States, Food Recovery Network is the largest student movement fighting food waste and hunger in America. NAU started its initiative in 2014 and recovers approximately 4,000 lbs. of hot food every semester and donates it to local food banks. “When we look at donating food at Clemson, the first challenge would be knowing when food is available to donate. The second would be how we collect it and transport it safety,” explained VanDeventer. “I am hoping it can become a collaborative effort where student volunteers can be directly involved.”

Getting students to volunteer is both a challenge and an opportunity at Clemson. According to Joseph, “I think the biggest challenge for reducing food waste is getting people motivated and educated about the issue. If students don’t care because of a lack of knowledge, nothing is going to change. Though the dining halls and composting centers can do some things about food waste, the students are really the ones in control. We have the means and the motivation to do a lot of good for the community, but people just don’t know about the issue or don’t understand the severity of it.”

There are absolutely opportunities to learn more about the food waste issue, and/or to get involved with campus efforts. For more information on how waste is handled at Clemson, visit https://cufacilities.sites.clemson.edu/recycling/recyclingInfo. Also, Dave VanDeventer and FRESH graduate research assistant Ana Romero will be leading another CI project this fall, this time with a focus on the disposal of packaging. Sustainability has become a hot topic among consumers, who demand that the products they purchase have sustainable packaging. Yet the professionals who develop this packaging don’t always consider the end of the package’s life, creating more of a challenge than anything for the professionals working at the recycling and compost centers. For more information on this CI, visit https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inquiry/ or reach out to VanDeventer directly at dvand@clemson.edu.

Sonoco FRESH is a multi-disciplinary hub for innovation and research at Clemson University whose mission is to have a major impact on the safety, security and sustainability of food. Visit www.clemson.edu/SonocoFRESH for more information, including Clemson student and faculty research.

The Sonoco FRESH initiative at Clemson University has awarded four research grants to professors who are addressing issues regarding food waste. In the U.S. alone, food waste is estimated at 40% across the food chain. With funding provided by Sonoco (a global provider of a variety of consumer packaging, industrial products, protective packaging, and displays and packaging supply chain services), the project subjects range in scope from packaging innovation to consumer communication.

The faculty members receiving the research grants are:

• Ya-Ping Sun, Ph.D., Endowed Chair Professor, Chemistry Department
• Kristen Elaine Okamoto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Communications Department
• Srikanth Pilla, Ph.D., Jenkins Endowed Professor, Department of Automotive Engineering
• Kay Cooksey, Ph.D., Professor and Cryovac Endowed Chair, Department of Food, Nutrition and Packaging Sciences

The mission of the Sonoco FRESH initiative, which was established with a generous philanthropic donation from the Sonoco Foundation, is to have a major impact on the reduction of food waste. With Clemson University’s top academic experts involved in every step of the food value chain, FRESH is a multi-disciplinary hub for research and innovation to deliver solutions to reduce food waste and promote sustainability. More information on the Sonoco FRESH initiative can be found at www.sonocofresh.com.  

By Kadence Baker

The FRESH initiative at Clemson University is a multi-disciplinary hub for research and innovation to address critical issues related to food waste and sustainability. Located in the Harris A. Smith Building, its mission is to have a major impact on the reduction of food waste. This means looking holistically at the food value chain to identify opportunities that reimagine the processes, sciences, technologies and behaviors for the greater good of society.

Recently, new members joined the team alongside Anne Barr, executive director of the FRESH initiative, Dr. Windsor Sherrill, Clemson’s associate vice president for health and research, and Dr. Jeff Rhodehamel, associate director of the Sonoco Institute and professor of food, nutrition and packaging science.

Kristy Pickurel was recently hired full-time as the new marketing and events manager for FRESH. She is originally from North Carolina and graduated from Elon University with a degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. Pickurel has worked in various marketing roles for nearly two decades and joins the FRESH team from the Environmental Research and Education Foundation, a nonprofit that funds research and education for sustainable waste management practices.

Christian Hussey is the new, full-time administrative assistant for FRESH. Hussey is originally from Manning, SC. In December she graduated from Clemson with a degree in parks, recreation and tourism management. In a former role at Clemson, Hussey helped manage events for the president’s box at Clemson football games. With that experience, she has been a wealth of knowledge to help plan the FRESH Food Waste & Sustainability Summit on Sept. 22-23 at Clemson.

Ana Romero is a Ph.D. candidate in packaging science at Clemson. Romero has multiple degrees, including a degree from the University of Costa Rica as well as an M.S. in food science from Clemson. Romero’s research is focused on intelligent packaging with sustainable materials. She plans to graduate with her doctorate this August.

Caroline Trembly is the social media intern for FRESH. She is a senior marketing major from Greenville, SC. She enjoys working on content creation and brand strategy. Her focus is on combining logistics and strategy in a creative space. Trembly is also an intern for the Erwin Center for Brand Communications at Clemson.

Kaylea von Seggern is FRESH’s market research intern. Von Seggern is a senior marketing major and packaging science minor at Clemson. Von Seggern recently finished her term as president of the Clemson Marketing Association and is heavily involved with her sorority. Before joining the FRESH team, von Seggern interned for Sealed Air Corporation.

Visit www.sonocofresh.com to learn more about Clemson’s FRESH initiative.